


Crystalline

by lothering



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2015-07-11
Packaged: 2018-04-08 21:06:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4320723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lothering/pseuds/lothering
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His life was made of rage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crystalline

His life was made of rage. 

From the day his twin sister was shoved around by bullies in the playground, to the night his father went out for milk and never returned. It grew over time, hard and tight in his gut, like a mineral crystal; completely against his will, utterly out of control. Grew inside him until it felt like the only thing beneath his skin, acquiring permanence by wrapping around his bones and squeezing tight until the two structures merged.

He was so cool on the surface, was North. Calm, collected, reasonable. Well, with an explosive sister such as the likes of South, somebody needed to be the balancing figure. Despite the fact that he was far from the gentle giant he was believed to be. Despite the howling fury that rattled in his chest when his name dropped down on the Mother of Invention's leader board. He was calm. He was cool. He was collected.

He was a tumultuous storm, beneath all of this.

\---

Killing without thought was a side-effect of the job. When command gave the word, he shot without discrimination. Bodies dropped, empty rounds fell to the ground, and North reloaded the chamber mechanically. Cold and efficient, emotionless, the rage within him quelled to silence. It was meditative, in a way. The rasp of a bullet in the chamber, adjusting the scope to his needs, laying front-down in the dirt, motionless for hours on end. It required great patience, and even greater skill, and lent an air of zen to the marksman. There was no time to weigh the morality of his actions each time he dropped a mark. One shot, one kill. Kill or be killed. When he was stalking, he was calm. He was free from the rage.

The present mission was much the same as any other he had been on. Stake out the location, wait for South to draw out the target, and eliminate him. Simple stuff, something they had done countless times before. And yet somehow, everything still managed to go to shit within seconds of the bullet slicing through the head of their intended target.

Turns out that little shed of a base had a subterranean bunker of all things, complete with back up forces. Huh.

In an instant, South was surrounded and North was putting all he had into racking up a body count from afar. Too slow. Where the fuck were all these guys coming from? How big was that goddamn bunker? South disappeared beneath a swarm of insurrectionist brute force. As for North?

North snapped.

He damn near threw himself from the tree he had been nestled in, a massive conifer taller than the apartment building he and his sister had grown up in with their mother back on Earth. His suit absorbed the impact of the landing, but his bones rattled and his skin burned feverishly, and Lord help him if the rage that grew crystalline and red hot within him didn't beg to burst out of it's cage.

Within moments he was in the fray, guns out and blazing, barrels to the backs of heads blasting brain matter across the pavement. Helmets peeled off beneath his hands, tossed away out of reach, heads gripped between his palms and bashed into concrete or the solid plate armour of fellow men. When the bullets ran out in his guns, he picked up more arms from the dead beneath his feet, fighting (always fighting, fucking Christ, one more dead at his hands) his way through the thinning frenzy to where South continued to wreak havoc of her own.

He blacked out, at some point. Or, rather, his mind excused itself from the massacre, letting the rage drive his body until they were largely in the clear. When he came to again, North was pulling a knife (handy little thing, given to him by Connie on his last birthday) out of the back of a pulverized man's skull. He wiped the blood off in the cadaver's hair, stood up, and radioed in to command for pick-up. Cool, calm, collected.

From where she leaned against a rusted girder, South assessed the carnage around her. "Shit, brother, if I didn't know better, I'd say you were angry just now."

North shrugged, slide his knife back into it's sheath, and simply laughed.

"I'm always angry."


End file.
